Multilateralism and the Non-Aligned Movement: What Is the Global South Doing and Where Is It Going?

This article briefly reviews some recent literature and then, taking them as a point of departure, it considers a number of themes relevant to the analysis of the current place of the global South in world politics and global governance that are incompletely covered in the existing literature, including the works under review. First, given that many key institutional manifestations of the global South (for example, the NAM and the Group of 77) exclude key states that are frequently identified as “Southern,” or have included states not generally viewed as being in the global South, where exactly on the geopolitical compass is the South? What are its physical and ideological boundaries? How do academics and practitioners differ in their understanding of multilateral diplomacy in the post-colonial era? To what extent and how has the UN influenced the development of “Southern” foreign policy and cooperation among developing countries? Fourth, how has the end of the Cold War occasioned a redefinition ...